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cobethotchan — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:44:48 MDT

On June 11 1963 Thich Quang Duc a Buddhist monk from the LinhMu Pagoda in Hue Vietnam burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon now Nguyen Dinh Chieu and Cach Mang Thang Tam Street Vietnam Eye witness accounts state that Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the intersection by car Thich Quang Duc got out of the car assumed the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over himself He ignited the gasoline by lighting a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes David Halberstam a reporter for the New York Times covering the war in Vietnam gave the following accountI was to see that sight again but once was enough Flames were coming from a human being his body was slowly withering and shriveling up his head blackening and charring In the air was the smell of burning human flesh human beings burn surprisingly quickly Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering I was too shocked to cry too confused to take notes or ask questions too bewildered to even think As he burned he never moved a muscle never uttered a sound his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around himThich Quang Duc had prepared himself for his selfimmolation through several weeks of meditation and had explained his motivation in letters to members of his Buddhist community as well as to the government of South Vietnam in the weeks prior to his selfimmolation In these letters he described his desire to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time Prior to the selfimmolation the South Vietnamese Buddhists had made the following requests to the Diem regime asking it to 1 Lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag2 Grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism 3 Stop detaining Buddhists 4 Give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion5 Pay fair compensations to the victims families and punish those responsible for their deathsWhen these requests were not addressed by the Deim regime Thich Quang Duc carried out his selfimmolation Following his death Thich Quang Duc was cremated and legend has it that his heart would not burn As a result his heart is considered Holy and is in the custody of the Reserve Bank of VietnamWhile Thich Quang Ducs selfimmolation has received little attention from religious scholars it has been interpreted from both a religious and political perspective From the prevailing point of view he has been exclusively conceptualized as a transhistorical purely religious agent virtually homologous with his specifically religious forebears and ancestors Therefore his selfimmolation is seen as a religious suicide and is religiously justified based on Chinese Buddhist texts written between the fifth and tenth centuries CEOn the otherhand it has been pointed out by both Thich Nhat Hanh and Russell McCutcheon that by contextualizing the event in 1963 Vietnam the selfimmolation can be seen as a political act aimed at calling attention to the injustices being perpetrated against the South Vietnamese people by a puppet government of EuroAmerican imperialism In this context Thich Nhat Hnah describes the act of selfimmolation as follows The press spoke then of suicide but in the essence it is not It is not even a protest What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming at moving the hearts of the oppressors and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance The Vietnamese monk by burning himself says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his people To express will by burning oneself therefore is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of construction that is to suffer and to die for the sake of ones people This is not suicide

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murdoc_mtm — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:00:32 MDT

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